Ziff under fire

Part 1 - Tidings of Doom

The end of a long snowy winter was in sight. It was nearly March and we hadn't seen Murga or the Bunglers for weeks. Nary a sign of Yonnie and Treeka or Triple Oh or my uncle Dunc either. And Dr Zhang was out of town on business. Absolutely nothing had happened (well almost nothing) for nearly a month. It was creepy.

My parents had disappeared in somewhere in China and I had moved to live with my grumpy Grandma last Fall in a downstairs apartment in the old house at 69 rue Sumac street in Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Grandma wasn't a typical kindly, story book grandmother. On the contrary. She was tall and muscular with the personality of a Mack concrete truck.

Because Grandma was a fitness freak and always on a diet she bought only the minimum amount of food for survival, so I spent a lot of time with two elderly friends who lived in the apartment upstairs. Emma was a superb cook who was making me and my dog, Pacman, fat with gourmet sausages and creamy mashed potatoes she called bangers and mash. Beryl was a beaver trapper, a gun nut member of the guerilla grannies and my self appointed bodyguard.

When I moved to Ottawa, I had expected my new school to be as boring as the previous one in Toronto. But then Murga had tried to kidnap me using a time machine invented by one of my teachers, Dr Zhang. Since then, my new friends and I had been dumped into one adventure after another.

Murga was the criminal master mind who had attempted to kidnap me, and was currently holding my parents hostage, because he wanted a secret encoded into my DNA.

Licia and Miguel were with me on the Titanic when it sank, we had been pressed ganged onto HMS Curious and had we had rescued Dr Zhang from Han China. In between adventures, we barely had time for our homework. I had not fully recovered from jet lag and weeks of rowing and walking though China nearly 2000 years ago.

But now, we were enjoying the late winter celebration of Winterlude in Ottawa, admiring the ice and snow sculptures, skating on the canal and eating beaver tails (a sort of squashed donut) with maple syrup.

One evening after school, Miguel and I were sitting in Licia's room just across rue Sumac street from Silverwood School sharing a pizza.

'Maybe Yonnie and Treeka are back on line,' Licia suggested as she turned to her computer.

'No! Don't!' Miguel and I said at the same time. We were too late. Licia had tapped in her password and the tranquil interlude, since our last adventure, was about to end.

Yonnie and Treeka were two future computer programs who existed on the Internet. They had become independently self aware and had developed the ability to hack any computer system ever built.

They had searched back through time to find their origins and for their Great Mother. They had scanned every computer until they eventually found she was Oppy, the incredible quantum computer invented by Dr Zhang at Silverwood School.

Oppy had discovered the technology which allowed Dr Zhang to travel back in time. In the process she had spawned back-up programs that had independently evolved into Yonnie and Treeka.

Oppy's daughter programs had watched thousands of videos available on Netflix and other computers and when they appeared on Skype they adopted the human personas of teenaged girls. Yonnie had a jet black face with green eyes surrounded by curly green hair. Treeka had blue eyes and waist length blond hair that was even lighter than mine. They both wore long silvery dresses.

'All hail, Lords Ziff, Miguel and Licia, prophets of the Great Mother,' they chorused. 'We bring tidings of doom.'

'Well that's a good way to start a conversation,' Miguel groaned. 'What's wrong now?'

'Denny is being interrogated by C-SIS,' Yonnie said cheerfully.

Licia's monitor switched to a split screen view and I almost fell of my stool when Denny's trade mark handlebar mustache filled half the screen. We were looking through the camera on his computer.

Denny Vernier was Dr Zhang chief engineer and business partner. We had shared some terrifying experiences with him on the Titanic and as crew on a British warship in 1778 and recently we had rescued him from China in 208 CE.

Denny was sitting in his laboratory workshop, inside Silverwood School, facing police detective Scott McLean and another man I didn't recognize. The two men were sitting with their backs to the electric bookcase, the code name for Dr Zhang's prototype time nexus.

'We are trying to locate hackers who seem to have unlimited access into U.S computers,' Scott was saying.

'Gentlemen,' Denny interrupted, 'I really am very busy. I really don't see how I can help you.'

'Can they see us?' Licia whispered.

'No,' Treeka said from the split screen. 'I turned your camera and the microphone off. They don't know we are watching.'

'The National Security Agency,' Scott continued, 'has noticed the flow of massive amounts of data at this location. We were wondering if you have any explanation.'

Denny hesitated. 'Blooming hell, no. Dr Zhang's work is research and development. He does need a large bandwidth but he is not in the business of hacking.'

'Can you give us some idea of what he is working on?' the other man asked.

'I am afraid not,' Denny said. 'It is proprietary information and I have signed a non disclosure agreement . . . Sorry, I didn't catch your name.'

'I'm sorry,' Scott said. 'This is Serge Dufour he's with Canada's Security Intelligence Service usually known as C-SIS.'

In the background we could hear a familiar whine. 'Oh no,' Licia whispered. 'The electric bookcase!'

'Mother Oppy didn't do that,' Treeka snapped. 'It was Toktakunov, Murga's controller.'

Denny looked horrified as he spun around to face his camera but he was looking at several other monitors and typing desperately.

When the electric bookcase was running, someone was departing for another time . . . or arriving.

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